biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1704–76)
|
| biography:
| Inventor, born in Barton-upon-Humber, North Lincolnshire, EC England, UK. After an apprenticeship to a clockmaker, he established a business in Doncaster making clocks, locks, and scientific instruments. Dissatisfied with the quality of available steel, he developed the crucible, or casting, process which produced a better and more uniform steel with less expenditure of labour and fuel, at a foundry he opened in Sheffield (c.1740). Although a major advance in steel production, crucible steel could be made only in relatively small quantities, and it required the advances of Kelly, Bessemer, and Martin in the mid-19th-c before steel would become a major structural material. |
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